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Reviews

Amazon Prime review: ‘One Touch of Venus’

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I’m reading Tolkien’s Beren and Luthien right now, and haven’t finished it yet. So I must find something else to post about. (Note to bloggers: Try to have interesting lives, because if you haven’t got a book review handy every day, you need something more interesting to write about than dentist visits and plumbing emergencies. Unless you’re James Lileks. Addendum to self: I’m not James Lileks.)

I think I mentioned that I’ve been watching old TV and movies on Amazon Prime. One thing that popped up in my suggestions the other day, which I selected, I’m not sure why, was an old 1940s musical called One Touch of Venus. It was a reasonable hit on Broadway, starring Mary Martin, and was made into a movie with Ava Gardner in 1948 – though they reportedly cut a lot of the songs (I’ve never seen it). The version I saw was a different one, done live on NBC TV in 1955, performed, according to the credits, by the Texas State Fair Musical Theater organization. The cast, most of whom are trying too hard in the tradition of live theater, features actress Janet Blair as Venus. The only other familiar face was Louis Nye in a small role.

It’s got a silly premise – a feckless barber named Rodney Hatch gets into an argument with an art collector over an ancient Greek statue. The collector declares the statue (which is surprisingly non-nude, and also bears a suspicious resemblance to a department store mannequin painted white) the image of female physical perfection. Indignantly, Rodney slips onto the statue’s finger the engagement ring he recently bought for his girlfriend – to prove that her hands are just as well-proportioned as a goddess’s. This action brings the statue to life, and Venus proceeds to ensnare Rodney in her charms, break his engagement, and (SPOILER ALERT) abandon him in the end to return to her worshipers (who appear, oddly, to be Hindu or Muslim). Rodney ends up with an entirely different girl from his original girlfriend, which strikes me as an odd plot resolution. I kind of felt sorry for the original girl. I probably dozed off during a scene where we learn why she’s unworthy of a barber.

A fact I missed going in dawned on me suddenly as Rodney was singing one of the production’s comic numbers – “How Much I Love You.”

“More than a catbird hates a cat, or a criminal hates a clue –

“As the high court loathes perjurious oaths, that’s how much I love you.”

 I tried to figure out where I’d heard this before. Finally I realized that I hadn’t heard it, I’d read it. It was published as a poem, and its writer was the great Ogden Nash. Then I remembered that Nash had written the lyrics for a Broadway production called “One Touch of Venus.” (The music, you may be surprised to learn, was by Kurt Weill, better known for “Mack the Knife.”)

My major reaction to the whole thing was, “Wow, culture sure has changed since the 1950s. They’d never do this play today.” Then I looked and found that it’s been revived several times recently. Judging by the sexual (or gender, if you prefer) norms portrayed in the original show, I have to assume considerable revision has been done.

I found a YouTube video of somebody singing “How Much I Love You,” but the actor was so annoying I refuse to post it. You can look it up yourself if you’re curious. They changed some of the lyrics too.

Fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Hobbit,’ by J.R.R. Tolkien

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It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Bilbo’s experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most—which is to say it was the one he was the most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it.

Recently I watched the Lord of the Rings movies (extended versions, of course; not the Hobbit films). And whenever I do that, it comes into my mind that I need to read the books again. Christopher Lee read them once a year, after all. I’m far behind that tally. So I pulled out The Hobbit, to begin the journey.

I’ll confess that at first I thought it kind of elementary. It is a children’s book, after all, and sometimes the author talks down to his audience.

However, it grew on my mind as I read that this book (along with the Trilogy) can be viewed from the perspective of veteran’s literature (I’m not a veteran, I hasten to note; but it’s something I can be aware of). When Tolkien tells us, again and again, that Bilbo wished himself back in his cozy hobbit hole, “not for the last time,” he’s conveying the feelings of the soldier at war. Not long ago, he was comfortable in his rooms at Oxford, eating well, cared for by servants, keeping regular hours. Now he’s slogging through mud or crouched in a flooded trench, struggling with boredom or dreading going “over the top.” Thoughts of home flood in; they are a torment and a comfort all at once.

And by the end of the book, I must confess, I had to blink back manly tears. I was moved.

The Hobbit is a great book. But you knew that.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Lucky Draw,’ by Mark Stone

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When I reviewed Mark Stone’s novel Lucky Break, first in his “Lucky John” series, the other day, I said (in so many words) that the book was slight, inconsistent, but rather fun. Having read book number two, Lucky Draw, I think I’ve had enough. It’s possible to be too slight.

“Lucky John,” the hero, is John Lucky, a former soldier and trucker who won the lottery and moved to Bonita Springs, Florida. He gets involved in investigating crimes, largely to keep himself occupied. In Lucky Draw, he’s hired to board a casino ship and participate in the world’s top poker tournament, in order to recover sensitive data that’s a threat to national security. He goes in accompanied by the girl who bought his winning lottery ticket, and they are soon surrounded by danger and betrayal.

The Lucky John books show strong signs of being written fast and not proofed for consistency. For instance, in the first book we were told John won the lottery in Iowa, and then he went on to tell people it wasn’t Iowa, but Indiana. Now we’re told it was in Illinois. I don’t think the author cares much.

The action is frequent and implausible, and in one scene I had no idea what was going on – the description didn’t make any sense to me. There was a nice moment when John counsels a young man to avoid pornography, but overall the story was long on fistfights and shootouts, and short on characterization.

It was fun for a while, but I think I’ve had enough now.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Nothing But the Blood,’ by S. D. Thames

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Recently, a friend reminded me of my review, some years ago, of A Mighty Fortress, the first book in the Milo Porter mystery series by S. D. Thames. I had lost track of this author, so I checked to see if there were more books. And there is one. Nothing But the Blood was published in 2017. I note that there have been no further Milo Porter books. I hope the author hasn’t given up, because he writes my kind of story.

Milo Porter is a Gulf War veteran who now lives in Tampa and works as a private investigator and process server. He suffers from PTSD, which expresses itself in bad dreams, (possible) hallucinations, and risk taking. He’s a Christian, as are most of his friends, who are also (including his girlfriend) mostly weight lifters. Milo is a pretty good lifter himself, and has just set a record. During the big lift, he sees a vision of blood and of his personal guardian angel.

That vision motivates him to take a job he’s offered the same day. A representative of a major league football team hires him to watch a young player whom they plan to select in the upcoming draft. Milo encounters surprising hostility from the player and his entourage. But then the player dies in a highly suspicious weight lifting accident, and Milo finds a new client and a new challenge – to unravel a complicated, ruthless conspiracy of fraud.

I enjoyed Nothing But the Blood a little less than A Mighty Fortress, probably because the pro football world doesn’t interest me a lot. But I was again impressed with the author’s professional prose, good characterization and plotting, and skillful manner of incorporating Christian faith into a (mostly) realistic story. I recommend Nothing But the Blood, with the caution that this isn’t a Frank Peretti book. Which, from my point of view, is a good thing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Lucky Break,’ by Mark Stone

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I sometimes joke about the infinite number of fictional detectives today who live on a Florida beach, in emulation of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. And yet they never do seem to run out. My latest discovery is the Lucky John series by Mark Stone, of which the first installment is Lucky Break. “Lucky John” is actually (if improbably) named John Lucky. A former soldier and over the road truck driver, he rescued a girl in a truck stop from a robber one night. In gratitude, she made out a lottery ticket for him using her phone number. The number was drawn, and John Lucky suddenly had more money than he’ll ever spend. (He did give the girl a piece of the prize.)

Having no real roots or family of his own, John decides to move to the place he liked best of all the places he’s ever visited – Florida. He buys a house in Bonita Springs, with his amiable buddy Davey, who seems to have been born to be a sidekick. Before long they’ve found a new favorite bar together, and shortly thereafter John defends the attractive bartender from her angry ex-husband. This leads to a complicated (and implausible) adventure in which John finds himself suspected of murder before uncovering and thwarting a diabolical revenge plot.

Believability isn’t a big consideration in Lucky Break. Details are contradictory, and extreme, movie-style dangers come at our hero rapid-fire. There is little time for meditation on life. The book is a fast read that probably didn’t take long to write.

But I kind of enjoyed it. Lucky John is a likeable hero, and the general mood is sunny, which is nice for a change. I bought the second book.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Framed Father,’ by J. R. Mathis

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In the second book of the J. R. Mathis’s Father Tom mysteries, The Framed Father, our hero is called back to the town of Myerton, Pennsylvania, where he recently solved the cold case murder of the woman he was married to before he became a priest. He left the parish in the hands of Father McCoy, a callow young priest who seemed the most innocent and inoffensive of men. But accusations have reached the archbishop that Father McCoy has been carrying on with his attractive administrative assistant. So Father McCoy is sent off into retreat, and Father Tom must take over at St. Clare’s once again. But when scandal turns to murder, Father Tom will again team up with Helen, his ex-fiancee, now a police detective (who is improbably open to amateur help) to try to save the young priest’s name and liberty.

I reviewed the previous book in the series, The Penitent Priest, as morally upright and well-composed, but weakly and improbably plotted. I thought The Framed Father somewhat better. There are still too many coincidences, but I didn’t guess the solution this time.

No bad language, heavy violence, or sex scenes to caution you about. Matters of the Catholic faith are treated seriously, and there are good depictions of crises of faith. Father Tom is a little too much the intuitive detective for my personal taste, but the book wasn’t bad.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Penitent Priest,’ by J. R. Mathis

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I probably wouldn’t have purchased J. R. Mathis’s mystery novel The Penitent Priest if I’d noticed that its tagline said “A Clean Murder Mystery.” (Puts me in mind of the old joke about “a nice old-fashioned murder with no immorality in it.”) When the first recommendation a book offers is its lack of dirty words and sex scenes, it’s not usually a guarantee of literary quality. But The Penitent Priest turned out better than I would have expected.

Father Tom Greer came to the priesthood late in life, after the murder of his beloved wife. So he’s somewhat nervous when the archbishop assigns him to temporarily replace the parish priest at St. Clare’s in Myerton, Pennsylvania. Myerton is where he lived as a married man and buried his wife, and where he abruptly left a number of old friends when he dropped out of sight afterwards. So he has some personal fences to mend.

But when an unseen stranger tells him secrets no innocent person should know in the confessional, Father Tom knows he has the opportunity to finally identify his wife’s killer. But he’ll also have to face his own fears and guilt.

I was impressed with the writing in The Penitent Priest. You rarely run into a novelist these days who can parse a decent English sentence and spell words right. The plotting, unfortunately, was less wonderful. As is not uncommon among starting authors, author Mathis has laid on too many coincidences. Why should the archbishop assign Father Tom to precisely this parish, considering his personal history and the fact that he’s still a person of interest in his wife’ murder? And is it really likely that the woman to whom Tom was engaged before he met his wife should show up as a police detective here?

Also, the big surprise at the end of the story might as well have been printed on the title page in big red letters.

But because I liked the writing, and because Father Tom is a good character, I bought the sequel.

Non-fiction, Reviews, Uncategorized

‘Children of Ash and Elm,’ by Neil Price

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Having at last finished Neal Price’s very long – and enjoyable – survey, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Viking Age, I find my feelings definitely mixed. There is much in this book that I admire and value. I learned from it. But I found what seem to me certain debilitating flaws in it.

I might mention, first of all, that (although he does not cite Viking Legacy, the great book to which I am immortally linked as translator) author Price takes the same line on the historical validity of the sagas – that they are not straight history and cannot be treated as such, but that they do contain useful information for the historian who employs them with care:

Even the most sceptical of literary researchers, those who generally reject the Old Norse texts as viable sources (however remote) for the actual Viking Age, do not always go on to confront the question this viewpoint requires: why, in that case, would medieval Icelanders have created—over several centuries—the most remarkably detailed, comprehensive, and consistent corpus of historical fiction in the world?

Author Price is an accomplished archaeologist, who has spent decades studying the Viking Age. His research is extensive, and he writes with the authority of long familiarity. His purpose in this book is more than to tell the story of the Viking Age. It is to draw on his learning and experience to try to convey to the modern reader the essence of the Vikings – how they saw the world, how they felt. I think he succeeds to a commendable degree.

Most big books on any subject try to offer a new theory or insight, and Children of Ash and Elm does this through a couple (relatively) new ideas – that the Viking Age began earlier and lingered longer than is generally assumed, and that the two Viking enterprises, the “west Viking” and “east Viking” currents, were in fact one and the same, with no real separation.

Hidebound non-specialist that I am, I must admit I’m not convinced by these arguments. Inception and terminus dates are notoriously hard to nail down, but Price points especially to a mass ship grave containing Swedish skeletons, found in Estonia and dated around 750 AD (he always uses CE dating, of course). I don’t entirely buy this argument. It’s hard to identify a “Viking raid” on the basis of a single burial, however impressive.

As for the unity of east and west, I have long held, and continue to hold, that the location and power of Denmark is a central issue in understanding the Viking Age. The simple fact that passing into or out of the Baltic required paying tolls to the king of Denmark tended to send Norwegians west and Swedes east, just to avoid his domains. The compartments weren’t watertight, but I think they existed.

I noted what seemed to me a telling omission in the book’s account of Viking slaving activities. Price makes no secret (quite rightly) of the fact that the Vikings routinely took and trafficked in slaves, and profited greatly from the trade. He speaks movingly of the suffering of those in bondage. But he seems to minimize the role of the Muslim world in it. He does mention the Arab markets, but only more or less in passing. Reading this book, you’d think most Viking slaves ended up toiling on Scandinavian farms. In fact, the great majority were headed into the insatiable maw of the Islamic slave markets.

The book was also marred, for me, also by occasional genuflections toward political correctness. Here and there, author Price finds it necessary to apply concepts like “privilege,” “intersectionality,” and “gendering” to the Vikings. I don’t think this is useful or illuminating in historical context.

Nevertheless, I found Children of Ash and Elm fascinating and informational. It’s written (and well-written) with a clear passion for the subject and a practiced critical eye. I recommend it, with cautions.

Once, in the Russian urban centre of Novgorod, where the waterlogged soil preserves such things well, I breathed in the scent of fresh pine a thousand years old, the whole site just saturated in the fragrance from all the woodworking waste lying where the Viking-Age carpenters had left it.

Non-fiction, Reviews

Reading report 2: ‘Children of Ash and Elm,” by Neil Price

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Ever see one of those old comedy movies, set in the Middle Ages or sometime, in which the orchestra suddenly breaks into swing music and everybody starts jitterbugging? (I recently watched “A Knight’s Tale” for the first time, and they did the same sort of thing , with different pop music. I fear this will not age well.)

I had much the same feeling today as I was reading Neil Price’s generally excellent book, Children of Ash and Elm. In a chapter called “Border Crossings,” he takes a break from a mostly well-informed and insightful study of Viking Age history to impose 21st Century concepts on an alien culture.

There are clear suggestions of queer identities in the Viking Age (with a caveat for the retrospective application of contemporary vocabularies).

Give him points for self-awareness, anyway. Retrospective application is precisely what’s going on here. I speak from a position of prejudice, of course, but it saddened me to see a good study like this marred by what I consider (I could be wrong, of course) a transient intellectual fad.

In fact (except for the admittedly problematic Grave Bj. 581 in Birka, which I can’t explain, but neither can anyone else), he is able to demonstrate nothing about the Vikings themselves other than that they had an extremely “gendered” (his word), male-dominated culture, in which there is evidence of a certain amount of deviance. You could say the same about the Victorians. He admits it plainly at one point, saying, “There are no positive depictions of same-sex relationships in the textual sources.”

To put it in terms comprehensible to current academics, Price is “appropriating” Viking culture, forcing his own paradigm on them in a way that they would have found offensive.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Most Likely To Die,’ by Rodney Riesel

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The saga of Dan Coast, Rodney Riesel’s self-destructive, alcoholic lottery winner living in Key West, continues with Most Likely To Die, in which Dan tries to clear a man unjustly accused of murder. Unless Dan is wrong. Which he often is.

Dan Coast doesn’t like the nurse Reatha Davis. She spoke condescendingly to him once, and corrected his grammar. But she works with Dan’s girlfriend Maxine, and Maxine likes her. So when Reatha asks Dan to find evidence to clear her husband, who’s been arrested for murder, Dan reluctantly agrees. Her husband, Reatha says, is a good man and had no enemies. And neither did his old friend, a schoolmate, who was murdered. Dan figures nobody gets murdered if they have no enemies, so he’s pretty sure somebody’s lying.

With the help of his ever-expanding posse, his big friend Rick, his surfer dude friend Skip, and now his childhood hero, astronaut Kip Larson, Dan runs around annoying people and interfering in the police investigation. Eventually they’ll figure it out, but only by crossing some legal lines.

I think I’m beginning to weary of Dan Coast’s act. The books are fast, and they have some laughs, but they’re not well-written (this one brings in a character from a previous book at one point, then forgets about him completely). They’ve never quite found their balance between comedy and tragedy, but this one was pretty much farce from the git-go. And not very believable.

Still, I won’t pretend it wasn’t fun. I’ve got something more serious to read now, but I may go back to Dan Coast when I need to rest my brain. Cautions for language and juvenile humor.